[Before we get started, I don't actually live in Glasgow, but I'm
planning to move there around the new year. In the meantime it's
not terribly difficult for me to get there for a visit, although
the same is true of any city in Scotland.]

I feel like Mr. Vernon has asked me to write an essay about who I
think I am. Each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a
princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

When I was young, the Teletext personal ads used to say "Looking
for friendship, maybe more!" and I always thought that was so
desperately disingenuous. And yet, today I suppose that's exactly
what I'm looking for. I've been around the OKCupid block a few
times (I actually just realised I've been on this site nearly a
decade!), and I don't believe in placing too high of an expectation
on a particular outcome.

But "looking for friendship" is a little vague. I'd like to meet
people to play games with. I'd like to meet people to chat with -
about music, movies, languages, games or anything interesting. I'd
like to meet people to go on adventures with. I'd like to meet
people to drink with like we're still 21. Also I'd like to meet an
astronaut but I think I might be on the wrong site for that.

I am very interested in video games, but I am especially interested
to see what they can do other than shooting mans in the face. Not
that I don't enjoy shooting mans in the face, but it's kind of been
done. A lot. A very lot. I think there's a lot of largely untapped
potential for other experiences there. Oh, and games are totally
art. Anyone who says otherwise not only doesn't understand games,
but also thinks art criticism stopped around 1900.

Recently got into intersectional feminism (which may explain why I
enjoy shooting mans in the face so much). As a cishet white male,
I'm sort of over the self-congratulation about the facile attitude
that "sexism/racism/homophobia/transphobia is bad". That's not
enough. The unconscious prejudices we carry are far more dangerous
than the overt ones, and beg reexamination. I'm aware that I still
have some way to go with that, but I'm glad I've realised that I
should actually listen to voices from marginalised groups
rather than just assuming I know best.

Speaking of which, I call myself straight, and I'm straight
enough as makes no real odds, but 'straight' does really
imply a rather binary view of gender, doesn't it? I also recently
learned what demisexual means and I'm not totally sure whether it
describes me but I'm trying it out. Since I didn't know what it
meant, I won't assume you do: It means I am not asexual but do not
(normally) feel sexual attraction towards people unless there is
also some other emotional connection.

I am a nerd about many things, but other than video games, another
big one is language and linguistics. If it bothers the fuck out of
you that my username contains the noun 'friend' rather than the
adjective 'friendly', I could hug you. The truth is
"friendlypolarbear" was too many characters for the entry field. If
you know what, say, 'CPV2' means, I have to inform you we are
already married.

Sometimes I pretend to music. I used to write songs but recently
I've been a lot more writing music for games. I am not good at it,
but I like it.

I'm not going to disclose my real name here, but you may call me
'you'. You may not call me 'u'. If you're cute you can call
me anything you like. Except 'u'. If I can call you Betty, then
Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al.

If I had to sum myself up in three words, it would be "not
impressing anyone".

Writing thinkpieces. Usually about games / interactive
storytelling. I don't actually think I'm good at it, but the
last piece I wrote got praise from actual professionals, so what do
I know?

Not taking it personally when people don't respond to my messages.
Let's be real here: I'd like a response, but you don't owe me
anything, you have other things going on, and you're capable of
making up your own mind about whether or not us being friends fits
in your life. That's it. There is no joke in this paragraph.

I feel games are left out of this question because of some
weird idea that they're not for everybody, but I'm going to talk
about them anyway. My favourite games cross traditional ideas of
genre but are undoubtedly those that contain some kind of human
element. Gone
Home - so rarely has a game made me care about characters I
never actually meet in person; Brothers: A Tale of
Two Sons - I don't want to spoil it, but the finale sees the
control scheme itself turn from a kinda cool gimmick into a really
emotive storytelling technique; Analogue: A Hate Story
- the other time a game has made me care about characters I
never actually meet; Thomas Was Alone - making me
care about characters who are, well, geometry, plus whom I never
really meet, since the whole game is narrated rather than mimetic;
Persona 4 -
which I think gets pubescent confusion more than any other
teen drama I've ever seen, much less any game; The Longest
Journey/Dreamfall, that kind of thing. Before
you ask, yes, Life is Strange is on my wishlist. In the Google
tradition of using site names as verbs, go ahead and Darkadia
me.

Me, smugly: "I don't watch TV."
Everyone else: "But you watch Netflix. How is that
different?"
Me: "...fuck."
I am currently catching up with Once Upon a Time and loving it.
I saw a couple of out-of-sequence episodes, but it's so much better
in order. On Crunchyroll I just got done watching Shin Sekai Yori
and thought it was mostly a work of sheer beauty and am currently
watching Uchū Kyodai. I like Doctor Who, Fringe, Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes and various other
things with a good balance of sci-fi, mystery, drama and being
funny, so obviously Joss Whedon's stuff. I am quite
liable to throw around quotes from Spaced.

As food goes, I used to be a vegetarian but I no longer am.
Sorry. If it's an egg dish, I like it. Unless it's a mushroom
omelette. Mushrooms do not belong in my mouth.

An internet
connection. This used to be because I was really interested in it
as a phenomenon, but now I think that in a few years, this answer
will be as obvious as 'air' or 'water' that 'people' put in this
list when they're 'trying' to be 'funny'.

Videogames are
very important to me. If you think they're a waste of time, you're
a waste of time and so's your mum. It's bewildering to me how the
medium that gave us Twilight can be lauded as worthy, but the
medium that gave us things like Thomas Was Alone still can't get
taken seriously.

A city. I might currently live out in the middle of nowhere, but
I'd go crazy if I couldn't get to a city (usually Dundee at the
moment) at least once a fortnight.

Some kind of project to give me a sense of achievement, whether
it's learning a new language, writing some music, or creating a
game.

A companion to join me on my time-hopping adventures. Or just
friends and family in general.

How to quantify the essentially unquantifiable. Doing science to
subjective responses.

Who came up with the order of the alphabet and why they chose that
order. And, more to the point, why we treat this ordering as some
immutable law of nature when it's really just something some
ancient dude made up.

Whether or not 'friendship' in the 21st century necessarily entails
the traditional mutuality and reciprocity it once did, and whether
or not that's a good thing.

Whether it's right for OKCupid to stealth-reword questions after
you've answered them, making you look like a complete
bellend.

Why the pro-Oxford-comma crowd keep resorting to the ridiculous
strawman that we 'againsters' think it shouldn't be used at all.
No-one thinks that; we merely think it should only be used when it
has any clarifying value, rather than all the damn time.
Obviously. The bonus is that that's actually the position the
Oxford Style Manual also takes.

Whether or not I really would go back and kill Hitler if I had a
time machine. I think I probably wouldn't: if those who fail to
learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then time-travellers
who change history doom everyone else.

Japan, Japanese, and why "alveolar lateral flap", which is a
technical term for a distinctly Japanese phoneme (usually romanised
as 'r'), seems to have been designed to be as difficult as possible
for Japanese people to pronounce.

The functional difference between a polymath and a dilettante.
Currently I think polymaths are just more organised.

I get irritated by people who say that swearing indicates a lack of
vocabulary. I suppose the idea is that people should use synonyms
instead, but this pretty much ignores the facts that a) at worst
synonymy indicates an imprecise semantic similarity, rather than
semantic identity, and b) at best, synonymy only works on a
semantic level, ignoring the affective level: People who claim this
have no poetry in their souls and implicitly endorse a kind of
unemotional Orwellian Newspeak - by implying that words are
interchangeable, they are saying that we might as well not have so
many words. I mean really: Just because excessive profanity is
involved in affecting the braggadocio of the less salubrious
sections of society, does that mean the rest of us should swear
(heh) off it? For fuck's sake.

Ok, that's not very private, but I needed to get it off my
chest.

On a more serious note, I'm the dude who sucks, plus I got
depression.